The end of life
can be bright shining red.
Or blackened silhouettes
of breath lost to the blue.
Yet even as you pass
the new possibilities sprout into Being.
Afternoon school practice at an old sports oval with no seating started out a little challenging. While my son and his teammates played kickball, I grabbed my journalling notebook out of my handbag and spread it out over some broken concrete — sitting there until tiny ants tore at the insides of my toes. After that, I tried leaning against a broken wire fence.
I tried to look interested in the game as I shifted my weight from left foot, to right foot, to left foot … over and over. But I was so uncomfortable.
Yet it was during that awkward lean, that a leafy tree right above me and stretching out over the oval — came into my awareness. Suddenly, instead of focusing on discomfort, I felt gratitude for its shade coverage and began to see art and beauty in the fallen leaves.
There were different shades of red scattered all over the ground and I delighted in the sticks, old seeds, and baby trees sprouting out of the concrete where I had been sitting just 10 minutes earlier with the ants.
Isn’t it incredible how a simple shift in focus can direct our eyes from black silhouettes to shining red? Pondering the entire life cycle that lay before me, I wondered how I could transform the colours of my own breath into new possiblities.